Last year, floods, storms, wildfires and other natural disasters caused $270 billion in economic damage worldwide.
That was less than the particularly expensive 2021 (320 billion), according to the company’s analysis, but was part of a “loss-heavy” period of the past five years, as Munich Re explained on Tuesday. The most costly disaster was hurricane “Ian”, which hit the east coast of the United States at the end of September 2022 with $100 billion.
Natural disasters are also becoming more and more expensive for insurance companies: out of a total of 270 billion losses, about 120 billion have been insured. “We have something like a new normal for the insurance industry with 100 billion annual losses,” said Ernst Rauch, head of geographic research at Munich Re. “We have exceeded this limit five times in the recent past. We will reach or exceed the hundred billion more often in the future.”
Since data is also important for calculating insurance premiums, Munich Re has been documenting global losses from natural disasters for decades.
(SDA)